Acquisition of visually guided conditional associative tasks in Gottingen minipigs

Fourteen Gottingen minipigs were trained on two different visually guided conditional associative tasks. In a spatial conditional task, a black stimulus signalled that a response to the left was correct, and a white stimulus signalled that a response to the right was correct, In a conditional go/no-go task, a blue stimulus signalled go, and a red stimulus signalled no-go. The pigs were trained until a behavioural criterion of 90% correct for each of two consecutive sessions. For the spatial conditional task, all pigs reached this criterion in 520 trials or less. For the conditional go/no-go task, all pigs, except three, reached this criterion in 1600 trials or less. Sows and boars learned equally fast. The tasks can be useful for the testing of cognitive function in pig models of human brain disorders. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.